The star of cineplexes

BACKSTAGE

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Tussles with state governments are "minor irritants". Ajay Bijli is more concerned about getting people to cinema theatres.

In the early 1990s, Indian cinema was on its last legs. Piracy was at its peak and those who wanted to watch films did so at home. Movie halls were reporting poor business.

Many had even shut down. Producers and script writers had run out of ideas to bring people back to the theatres. The Shahrukh Khan phenomenon was still several years away, so was Mallika Sherawat.

Then in 1995, Ajay Bijli set up India's first multiplex "" PVR in South Delhi "" creating an ambience never before seen in the country. Overnight, watching films was the in thing.

The crowd, this time from all walks of life, returned to the theatres. And the film industry started riding the gravy train once again. Today, from Bangalore to Bareilly, the entire nation is in the grips of a multiplex mania pioneered by Bijli.

So much so that the past 10 years have seen a whole new genre of films (typically, low-budget films in Hinglish) and stars (Rahul Bose, Koel Purie and the like) made just for multiplexes.

Bijli himself could pass off as a multiplex star. He looks lean and fit (he runs for an hour thrice a week) and is a stylish dresser. His thick eyebrows and lean face give him a brooding appearance.

Today, he is wearing a light blue D&G shirt and faded denim trousers. A Montblanc sits in his shirt pocket and a Franck Muller designer watch with a blue strap on his left wrist.

It is a hot Friday afternoon and we are sitting in China Club in Gurgaon. The restaurant is full, mostly people from offices in Gurgaon, but Bijli had the foresight to book a table for us.

Both of us are hungry "" Bijli from holding review meetings in his office and I from driving 30 km to the rendezvous "" and we decide to order first and talk later. Sorry, no dimsums, we are told, because the chef has gone to China.

But Bijli is a regular and he knows what is best on the menu: fried prawns and chicken in bean sauce for starters, and fried lamb, assorted vegetables and a mildly spicy chicken gravy for the main course.

Bijli's phone, I notice, rings every few minutes and he says the same thing to the caller: "No, I didn't call you." Some persistent salesman wanting to sell an insurance policy? "No, no. Some people are playing pranks. It is April Fool's Day.

There's an old employee in our legal department and one after the other people are telling him that I am looking for him," Bijli says. It is also his younger brother's birthday. Afraid that none of his friends will show up if he throws a party, he has left for Hong Kong.

Bijli is the only person I have come across with that name. "How come you have such an unusual surname," I prod. He tells me the story. During Partition, his grandfather, Lala Sai Das Mehra of Amritsar, was very active in organising relief work for refugees from Pakistan. As a result, he came to be called "Bijli Pehalwan" (the Lightning Muscleman). And the family proudly adopted the name.

His own journey to the multiplex business is no less interesting. After doing "honours in basketball" from Hindu College in 1988, Bijli joined the family business, Amritsar Transport Company. But it didn't interest him much.

A movie buff to the core, he started running a theatre his father had purchased in the 1970s: Priya, in the tiny Basant Lok commercial district of south Delhi. He renovated the hall, invested in air-conditioning and positioned it as a premier theatre specialising in Hollywood movies.

A few years later, a distributor for Hollywood films put him in touch with Village Roadshow of Australia, which was looking to expand in India.

Bijli travelled to Singapore and put together a 60:40 joint venture with the understanding that the Australian company could upscale its stake to 50 per cent in due course. This is how PVR was born in 1995.

Bijli now had to look for a hall to convert into a multiplex. He was unwilling to do it in Priya since this would have disrupted his cash flow.

Gopal Ansal, a brother of construction magnate Sushil Ansal, had a cinema hall in south Delhi but had lost interest in running it. Bijli quickly took it on lease.

It took him two years to refurbish the hall. (Some years ago, Bijli acquired the property privately for sentimental reasons since it was instrumental in catapulting him to fame and success.)

The starters have arrived. The prawn is perfect but the chicken is too spicy to handle and we both douse the fire with water. Bijli registers his protest and resumes his story: he became complacent after the initial success.

Till 1998, when Sunil Mittal intervened. (The two first met at a bowling alley in south Delhi and soon became friends.) He asked Bijli to go for a special course (Owner/ President's Management Programme) at Harvard. "That is when I realised the model was scaleable," he says.

But there was a problem. After 9/11, Village Roadshow wanted to pull out of India. This was Bijli's toughest challenge. He had to arrange money to buy out Village Roadshow in the venture as well as to fund the expansions.

"That was a really tough time," Bijli says, admitting that was perhaps the only time he came to work in a business suit. Finally, ICICI Bank picked up a minority stake in his company and Bijli unrolled his expansions.

Bijli says he now has enough in-house expertise to put up a multiplex within four months of being handed over a building. All told, he operates 39 screens in the country, almost two-thirds in and around Delhi.

In a year's time, he hopes to raise the number to over 100. That, he says, will give him enough muscle to bargain with production houses. "We could ask them to stagger their releases," he says.

The main course helpings are large. The lamb has been fried to perfection and the chef has gone easy with the spices. Gradually, I begin to realise that there is a lot more to Bijli's daily work than being seen with film stars.

In fact, Bijli plays no role in acquiring films. "I have a person in Mumbai for that," he says. His job is to build and preserve the PVR brand by creating the same experience in all his theatres. He also spends a lot of time lobbying with state governments to lower the entertainment tax.

Then there are other problems that need to be ironed out. "We opened a new cineplex in Ghaziabad (in Uttar Pradesh) a few days ago. But we were told we can't have computerised ticketing as it might cause under-reporting. Actually, it is manual ticketing that can cause under-reporting," he says.

Over the next half an hour, Bijli regales me with his various "battles" with states: The Tamil Nadu law says that tickets for the front two rows have to be sold at Rs 10 each; the Andhra Pradesh law forbids theatres to have more than five shows in a day; the Karnataka government was seriously considering a proposal to defer the launch of Hindi films by at least two weeks in order to protect the Kannada film industry.

At the moment, Bijli considers these minor irritants and is focused on multiplexes: he has turned down offers to finance at least two films "" the critically-acclaimed Maqbool and the coming Aamir Khan starrer, The Rising.

By the time we wrap up the conversation, most of the guests have left the restaurant. We also decide to call it a day.